Looking after him, Hugh was startled to catch a brief glimpse of a man dressed in complete dinner clothes, including top hat, crossing the street and rounding a corner. Hoping that this vision from his own age might know something significant about this screwy world, he ran after him, but lost him in the traffic. He found nothing but a nondescript and unhappy alley-cat which ran at his approach. * * * * * Discouraged, Hugh went back the way he had come and set out in search of the public square and an astrologer. As he walked, he gradually became conscious of a growing current of people moving in the same direction, a current which was swelled by additions from every street and byway they passed. There was a predominance of holiday finery, and he remembered the giant's words about a parade. Well, he'd just follow the crowd; it would make finding the square that much easier. Curious snatches of conversation reached his ears as he plodded along. "... Aye, in the square, sir; one may hope that it bodes us some change...." "... Of Yero eke, that of a younge wyfe he gat his youthe agoon, and withal...." "... An' pritnear every time dis guy toins up, yiz kin count on gittin' it in the neck...." "... Oft Scyld Yero sceathena threatum, hu tha aethlingas ellen fremedon...." Most of the fragments were in English, but English entirely and indiscriminately mixed as to century. Hugh wondered if the few that sounded foreign were actually so, or whether they were some Saxon or Jutish ancestor of English--or, perhaps, English as it might sound in some remote future century. If that latter were so, then there might be other cities in Outside where only old, modern and future French was spoken, or Russian, or-- The concept was too complex to entertain. He remembered the giant's warning, and shook his head. This world, despite the obvious sweating reality of the crowd around him and the lumpy pavement beneath his feet, was still too crazy to be anything but a phantom. He was curious to see this Yero, who looked so inexplicably like Jeremy Wright, but he could not take any warning of Outside very seriously. His principle concern was to get back inside again. As the part of the crowd which bore him along debouched from the narrow street into a vast open space, he heard in the distance the sound of trumpets, blowing a complicated fanfare. A great shouting went up, but somehow it seemed not the usual cheering of expectant parade-goers. There was a strange undertone--perhaps of animosity? Hugh could not tell. In the press he found that he could move neither forward nor back. He would have to stand where he was until the event was over and the mob dispersed.